The Bride of Texas (49 page)

Storey of the
Times
, however, paid all the more attention. I met the man personally only once in my life. He was a tall, grey-haired, withdrawn gentleman with a passion to create a great newspaper. He was dominated by two related emotions: a hatred for Lincoln and an aversion to Negroes. When Humphrey and I were in Chicago attending a dinner at Dean Stowell’s with Storey, a Methodist clergyman from Virginia (who apparently had no idea who Storey was) came out with a petition to Lincoln, asking him to do away with slavery as a sign of repentance for a great national sin. Before he could start circulating it for signatures, Storey turned to him and, pinning the cleric
to his chair with an icy stare, said, “The great national sin for which Providence is punishing the American people is the election of Lincoln to the presidency. The punishment for this sin, sir, is entirely proper.”

As my husband remarked, Storey’s articles expressed his hostility towards the Rebels purely in terms of a formal libation to the Federation. For his hatred of Lincoln and his “niggers and nigger-lovers”, on the other hand, Storey employed expressions suffused with genuine feeling. It is no surprise, then, that Ambrose — who revered, perhaps even loved, the president — paid particular attention to Storey’s attacks, the more so since Ambrose’s old friend from Liberty, Ollie Morton, now governor of Indiana, was also complaining about Storey. In this Morton was in full agreement with his colleague Richard Yates, who had wired Washington some time earlier that something needed to be done about the
Times
or “the citizens of Chicago would take matters into their own hands”. Ambrose was far from alone in seeing Storey as a covert (not so covert, actually) Rebel supporter. But in the end, of course, all of them, Ollie Morton included, left him to stew in his own juice.

The
Times
kept attacking him personally, but Ambrose could tolerate personal attacks. What he could not stomach was a report from “X”, the newspaper’s Washington correspondent. “X” described Lincoln as a haggard, careworn ruin of a man, consumed by justified remorse, his conscience burdened with sins as heinous as the emancipation of the slaves. Lincoln was nothing more than a servant dancing to the tune of his cabinet; “such are the men who control the destinies of this once-free Republic.”

Neither the author nor Ambrose noticed any discrepancy between the cited sin and the conclusion of the article. Ambrose missed it because the journalist’s portrait of the president had enraged him. With one foot on the train that was to take him to
the Twenty-third Corps in Kentucky, Ambrose issued three orders in rapid succession, suspending the publication of the
Times
and formulating his perhaps simplistic but unwavering conviction that “freedom of discussion and criticism which is proper in the politician and journalist in time of peace becomes rank treason when it tends to weaken the confidence of the soldier in his officers and his government. Citizens are in a sense soldiers, and citizens as well as soldiers have sacrifices to make, and these sacrifices extend to freedom of speech and the press.”

After that Ambrose left for Kentucky, where he was to launch his offensive against eastern Tennessee. Except that in the meantime they had changed their minds in Washington, and at Hickman’s Bridge a telegram was waiting for him instructing him to move his troops to the Vicksburg theatre of operations.

It would not be the last time in those unsettled days of early June that Washington changed its mind, and the consequences would fall on Ambrose’s head.

Before she left that evening, Maggie described her marriage. It confirmed my belief that, were she to pick up a pen, she would eclipse Laura Lee. Like every reputedly happily married woman, I have heard my share of reports from friends afflicted with unhappy unions. Although they were all true stories, they were usually, in formal terms, sheer symbolism. The heroine was a pure lily, while her partner was an evil spirit who could teach the Devil a thing or two. Maggie’s story was spare and free of symbols, embellished only with touches of irony.

The story started not so much with the wedding as with the miscarriage, the death of the baby who had escaped death only a few months earlier, and it ended with the death of Colonel
Brumble a step away from the little stone wall on Marye’s Heights. Between the two deaths were years of silence, duties fulfilled only in hopes of another child, which never came. Each found the other’s presence unbearable, torture; a trap. And above it all stood an absurd guardian angel with gigantic side-whiskers.

“There’s a similar story in
Twilight in Baltimore,”
said Maggie. “The marriage between Elvira and Henry. But of course he married her because his parents wanted him to, not because she ran away from the abortionist. Although who’s to say? You probably can’t write about that in novels anyway.”

“No, not in the ones Laura Lee writes. And besides, that’s just a sub-plot. The main plot in
Twilight in Baltimore
is the same as in all — in all her other books. It’s a simple formula: a trip to the altar after overcoming amusing setbacks.”

Maggie got up, the cigar between her lips, and walked around the parlour. She stopped again in front of the blue-eyed Roman girl and blew a cloud of bluish smoke at the bust.

“Why doesn’t Laura Lee ever make the trip to the altar the sub-plot, amusing setbacks and all?” she asked.

“Because it’s easier to write. At least I think it would be,” I added hastily. “Telling about life as it really is —”

“Have you ever tried it?”

I shook my head and replied in what I hoped was a tone of offhand surprise, “You know I don’t write.”

My voice gave me away. Maggie turned from the Roman bust to face me: “No fibbing, Laura!”

In Detroit I heard about a reporter whom Storey sent to cover the murder of a Democratic clerk at City Hall. The newsman
filed a report based on nothing but confirmed facts, which were not enough to prove the guilt of the suspect, a bartender and well-known Lincoln supporter. Storey added some details of his own devising which clearly pointed the finger at the bartender. The story was published, the reporter got angry, and he and Storey had it out. Finally Storey fired the man, with a gem of a parting statement, worthy of Mr. Bartlett’s attention: “You’re forgetting, Mr. Bendix,” said Storey to the departing journalist, “that you are not working for the sheriff, and you aren’t paid by the city. You’re a reporter for the
Times
, and you’re paid by me.”

In the end the sheriff’s men found evidence against the real murderer, and the bartender was released, but the whole affair dragged on for several months and the fabricated news story was forgotten. For Storey the fabrication was worth a few dollars in extra copies sold, thanks to the sensation. Nothing was more valuable to him than that.

In Chicago, Storey didn’t have to fabricate anything. After Ambrose’s edict, the
Times
failed to appear for two days, but Lincoln revoked the order and the newsboys made the city echo with shouts of “Freedom triumphs!” — and Storey made a few more dollars. Later, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles would say that Ambrose’s edict was just the kind of regulation that “gives bad men the right to question the actions of good men.” Perhaps. Storey, of course, could not have cared less.

I thought about it all in the parlour, and stared at the summer stars outside the tall window. Then I considered the things that are more important than the stars.

(illustration credit 6.1)

O
NE MORNING
, after days and weeks of rain, the sun finally appeared over the horizon. The landscape looked freshly scrubbed and Carlin’s division were shuffling slowly into some semblance of order, readying themselves to march out as the advanced guard for Jeff Davis’s Fourteenth Corps at the head of Slocum’s Georgia army. It was a fine day, without a trace of fog. Beyond the horizon the turpentine forests were still smouldering, and there was a thin grey haze hanging over the trees. But the sinister black columns of smoke that had towered over them like the buttresses of a gutted cathedral were gone. The march to Cox’s Bridge, where Davis was to meet Sherman the next morning, was about ten miles. Even if Carlin had to dispose of some cavalry squadrons that were in the way, they would still make it that day. That would put them barely twenty miles from Goldsboro, where Schofield would shortly be arriving with a fresh army.

“I expect the danger is past,” Sherman said that morning. He was convinced that Hardee, Bragg, and Johnston were falling back on Raleigh. They must have concluded — and had that conclusion confirmed by prisoners taken at Ayersboro — that Greeley’s article had been a ruse; must have decided to stand and fight a major battle, perhaps the final battle of the war, just outside the state capital.

“It’s Sunday.” Sherman smiled. “A good time to visit Howard.” At the beginning of the war, General Howard had argued that the fighting should stop on the Lord’s Day so that soldiers could spend the day in worship. Sundays in Howard’s army still began with services when possible, but usually the fighting went on as on workdays.

On his way back from the creek, the sergeant had a tingling sensation in the back of his neck, as though someone were pointing a gun at him. He rode past an apricot orchard in bloom and watched the Twenty-second Wisconsin lining up company by company at the foot of a hill that was glowing with spring green, preparing to scout in advance of Carlin’s division. Ragged and caked in mud, the boys from Wisconsin looked more than ever like an army of able-bodied beggars.

An orderly was brushing a new uniform in front of General Carlin’s tent, and through the tent flaps the sergeant caught a glimpse of the general buttoning up his fresh white shirt and looking gloomy.

“What’s this?” Kapsa asked the orderly. “We’re not going on parade.”

“That’s how the old man always dresses before a battle.” The soldier grinned. “If he bites the dust, they’ll be able to tell him by the crease in his pants.”

“There won’t be a battle,” the sergeant said loyally. “A few skirmishes with Wheeler, maybe, nothing worse.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” said the orderly. “The old man has a nose for blood, and he’s smelling it right now. Look yonder!” He pointed west. Supply wagons were already moving off towards the rear. “He wants to make sure the Rebs don’t get their paws on our ham if the battle goes wrong.”

“There won’t be a battle,” the sergeant muttered again, and walked quickly towards his general’s tent, where Sam stood saddled and ready. As Sherman came out of the tent, he put on
his hat. A piece of its brim was missing and, where it had once sported a plume, now only the quill was left. The sergeant couldn’t remember the original plume — it had always been just a quill sticking out of the band — but he remembered the brim being intact.

The general swung into the saddle and turned his weather-beaten face to the east. At seven in the morning the sun, still low on the horizon, was already warm. They started off.

They had ridden barely three miles — Howard’s army was dangerously far from Slocum’s, in places as much as twenty miles — through the spring countryside, past pine groves and deserted plantation houses, past swamps where birds sang their first mating songs, past blossoming apple orchards and flowering apricot trees. A cool breeze was blowing but it seemed almost warm after the chill of the rainy days. Waterfowl circled overhead. Up ahead the sergeant could see the general’s back and Sam’s glistening flanks, the staff officers riding in their usual pendulum motion, falling behind the general’s swift horse and then catching up again. The sergeant dozed for a moment in the saddle and dreamed of Chicago after the war. Ursula, who had turned into a faded picture in his memory, had suddenly come alive with the words of Madam Sosniowski. He hadn’t found out a lot from her in Columbia — only that Ursula was alive and in America — but it was enough to dispel his worst nightmares into a puff of smoke.